Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Future Forward asks you to #SolveBig

On Thursday, July 13 in Toronto, Waterloo students and faculty are invited to participate in a free event sponsored by OpenText called Future Forward.

Future Forward is designed for attendees to gain a grasp of the fascinating opportunities in “a space poised to take a giant leap forward in an era of accelerated innovation, artificial intelligence, and mobile,” according to an announcement from OpenText.

The daylong series of TED Talk style presentations by business leaders and academics, including University of Waterloo President Feridun Hamdullahpur, is targeted specifically at university students with an interest in technology and innovation. Topics include problem solving, new technology, and the keys to building a great career.

The event is designed to help students explore a career path in enterprise software. There will be opportunities to connect with industry professionals, subject matter experts and entrepreneurs on the expo floor at OpenText’s annual user conference: Enterprise World.

Talks are followed up with access to the Expo Hall floor, a fantastic networking opportunity including booths, pods, and demos.

Sessions include:

• Disrupting the 21^st Century University - President and Vice-Chancellor Feridun Hamdullahpur, University of Waterloo
•  Quantum is Coming - Martin Laforest, The Institute of Quantum Computing
• Shopify Goes BIG - Mark Bergen, Shopify Plus
• Innovation Activation - Craig Haney, Communitech
• The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise - Stephen Piron, Deep Learni.ng
• Why Big Problems Are The Only Problems Worth Solving, And Why You Will Fail To Solve Them - Larry Smith, University of Waterloo

Students can also apply for one of five paid internship opportunities exclusively available to Future Forward attendees. Check out the Future Forward site to learn more.

Future Forward is part of OpenText’s annual user conference. This year, the event is occurring at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Chemical engineering industry leaders visit Waterloo

by Naz Kittani

Sarnia-Lambton is a growing hub for the energy, manufacturing and downstream petroleum industries. The area is an engineering hotbed – more specifically for chemical engineering. Up to 39 percent of engineers working in Sarnia are chemical engineers. Recognizing the abundant opportunities for students in this area, Co-operative Education and Career Action (CECA) planned an event to unveil the hidden gems of Sarnia-Lambton.

Last month, representatives from the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership (SLEP) visited Waterloo’s campus to promote the region to co-op students as a prime destination to live and work. Dozens of students attended the event to network with top industry leaders.

The visit kicked off with an information session for Chemical Engineering students hosted by CECA Business Developer Emily Burgess. The session featured a presentation from David Moody, project lead, business growth services for SLEP. Moody focused on Sarnia-Lambton’s job growth, the area’s rich economic history and why it’s a great spot for a co-op term. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session with three Chemical Engineering students who have worked in Sarnia. The event concluded with a networking session.

SHAD program begins this weekend

This year's month-long SHAD program starts on Sunday, July 2 at the University of Waterloo with the arrival of 54 the best and brightest high school students from across Canada.

In 1983, Waterloo became the first university campus to host this prestigious program that has helped Canada’s top youth find and reach their potential. The university has continued to play a crucial role ever since with SHAD’s national office based in the city and many of the students deciding to come back after SHAD to pursue their studies.

SHAD is an award-winning enrichment program for students with a strong interest and potential in in STEAM based subjects (sciences, technology, engineering, arts and math) and has helped serve as an incubator for entrepreneurship and innovation for the students who participate nation-wide. The SHAD Network now includes an impressive 15,000 alumni including 32 Rhodes Scholars.

During the month of July, lectures and workshops are offered by top faculty from across campus, and from visionary leaders in the community. Rob Gorbet, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Knowledge Integration, is the SHAD Waterloo Program Director.

“By exposing 801 high achieving high school students this year to great ideas from leading faculty across Canada and some of the world’s biggest challenges, the students are inspired by the SHAD network to start making an impact now,” said Tim Jackson, SHAD’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

In one of the unique elements at SHAD, during the first week, youth are challenged to innovate on a specific theme, built around a current economic and social problem. SHAD youth, working in small teams, collaborate to design and engineer a new solution that addresses the problem. As part of this challenge, teams conduct market research, write business and marketing models, and design and build working prototypes.

SHADs will hold a public open house to show off their achievements, including creative ideas they have come up with to tackle this year’s deign project theme, on the afternoon of Thursday July 27, in the Great Hall at Conrad Grebel University College.

IST updates list of summer SEW courses

Information Systems & Technology (IST) has announced that registration is now open for the summer workshops for the Skills for the Electronic Workplace (SEW) program. As most of the instructors are taking a well-deserved break this summer, a partial selection of workshops will be available for this period, such as Google Analytics 101 and Social Media Measurement, as well as the WCMS courses. All of the machines in the training labs have been migrated to Windows 10 and Office 2016.

Sign up for these workshops through MyHRinfo. This system allows attendees to view available spaces in workshops, register online, view your registration history and status, and receive immediate registration e-mail notifications. Register for courses through the Learning and Development module of the Self Service menu (where you view your payroll and benefit information). A walk-through of the registration process is available if you are unfamiliar with the procedure.

Wednesday's notes

The School of Pharmacy's Sherilyn Houle will participate in a town hall discussion tonight at 7:00 p.m. entitled "Pharmacare is a prescription for better medicine." Other speakers at the town hall include MPP for Kitchener Waterloo Catherine Fife and Stacey Danckert of the Green Party of Ontario. The event, which takes place at 1st United Church in Waterloo, has been organized by the Kitchener chapter of the Council of Canadians.

Plant Operations has advised that much of the Physical Activities Complex will be going dark on Tuesday, July 4 from 5:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. as electrical panels are replaced. Before heading out for the long weekend, denizens of the PAC should ensure that their computers are properly shut down in advance of the power outage.

Check the Plant Operations page for updates on the upcoming outage.

A celebration of life for retired Waterloo Sociology professor Alicja Muszynski will take place on Sunday, July 16 at 2:00 p.m. at the Erb and Good funeral home. Muszynski, who retired in 2015, died on May 22.